FREE: DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT/HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL

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HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL is a very typical 1950s horror movie, even down to the fact that it stars Vincent Price. Price has rented a supposedly haunted mansion and is offering a group of diverse characters $10,000 for each person who manages to survive the entire night there. The house does indeed become another character. Sure, it looks like a 1950s Hollywood set, but it's a set with secret rooms, mysterious cellars, and dark passageways (where the actor is always bathed in bright spotlights, yet always seems to be surrounded by utter darkness). The set dressing is very rich with all manner of half seen objects sitting on dressers or lying on tables. You could easily imagine a character quickly pulling a gun out of a drawer, or poison out of a cabinet. The clutter adds to the mystery. Some of the things we see will be important; others will be mere red herrings.

In stark contrast is the setting of DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT. While again we have a large structure with countless rooms, corridors and closets, this time the backgrounds are very sparsely adorned. Remember now that BASEMENT comes from the horror films of the 1970s where realism ruled. No longer are murders committed half-seen in mysterious shadows. If someone meets their demise via a chainsaw to the neck, then, by God, we're going to see every bit of sinew that comes flying out. And it's going to be brightly lit. And we're going to hear every scream.

The sanatorium in BASEMENT looks exactly how we expect a low funded mental hospital to look like. Exactly the way the filmmakers of HAUNTED HILL played on the expectations of a mysterious mansion. The fantasy of the 1950s gives way to the realism of the 1970s. The sets of BASEMENT are spacious enough, but the sparsity in decoration and the clinical, bright white walls make us feel almost claustrophobic, like the room is closing in on us. Whereas the grand fantasy of HAUNTED HILL causes us to imagine that there is some ghostly, evil presence.